"As early as mid-December, consumers will be able to go to retail stores in the United States and Australia to purchase a Surface with Windows RT. Additional availability will be added in a number of countries in the coming months." Sales might indeed benefit from, you know, allowing the world to actually buy your halo product. Us Dutch won't be getting the Nexus 4 and 10 either.

So lack of sales is forcing them to go to wider distribution channels so they can't keep all the revenue from in store sales. Likely this is "plan b" or (early) "phase 2" being activated to try to get a foothold in the tablet market.